Day 7: HOPE...The whole Donald Trump thing

“I could sense . . . that brotha has been humbled by this world thing.”- Oprah Winfrey


OK, it cannot be avoided. I saved HOPE for our President-Elect for last. Because, honestly, how can I possibly have hope in this new leader?


So...I google "how to maintain hope with a trump presidency", and I get precious little. I try other phrases. Still nothing. There must be someone out there who has hope.

Then I ran across an interview with Gayle King's best friend, Oprah, in "Vanity Fair". She says, “Everybody take a deep breath! #HopeLives!”. OK, if Oprah says it, it must be true.

So that, I guess, is an attitude of HOPE.

Then there is the act of HOPE, expressed well by a StarTribune letter to the editor. Rich Cowles of Eagan says, "Those of us who saw Trump's racist, fear-mongering campaign as a threat to America...have a a moral imperative to speak out for those most threatened...We must vigilantly resist, at every turn, the erosion of our values of equal worth and opportunity. We must express outrage and come to the aid of our fellow citizens every time we encounter hate speech and behavior..."

Finally, there is the belief of HOPE, expressed so well by my minister, Pastor Bradley Schmeling, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church: "The wisdom that God has given to so many who make their way at the margins is that hope comes in God’s character and God’s history of redemptive and saving actions. They trust that God has saved in the past, so God will save again. The only way to have the kind of endurance that can save your soul, is to trust one more time that the arc of the universe does, indeed, bend toward justice."

Well, this all calls for a lot of  HOPE. Let's do it.